


tell my love to wreck it all

by romiosini



Series: paris rising [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-16
Updated: 2018-04-16
Packaged: 2019-04-23 20:32:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14340378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romiosini/pseuds/romiosini
Summary: Okay, Magda thought, her fingers slippery with blood,this could be worse.





	tell my love to wreck it all

**BELLEVILLE, PARIS - OCTOBER 1985**

 

 _Okay_ , Magda thought, her fingers slippery with blood, _this could be worse._

“Stop moving,” she ordered curtly. Karim obeyed wordlessly, sniffing. His nose was still bleeding like crazy. “Put your head back. I need more gauze.”

“I’m good,” he reassured her. Only he wasn’t good, and it came out more like _M’gchood_. She stuffed a rolled piece of gauze up his nostril and he shrieked. “Mag! Come on!”

“You are bleeding all over my kitchen floor,” she deadpanned. “I don’t think you get to complain about the service.”

Her father had always wanted her to become a doctor.

“I need to go check on the others,” Karim said.

“You need to lie down,” Magda rolled her eyes. “If you go out like that, I’m not letting you back in.”

Karim grumbled something that sounded an awful lot like _okay, mom_. She chose to ignore him. Sometimes it felt like she had been called mom sarcastically enough for a lifetime. She wondered if there was enough space inside her chest for actual children.

The mop drank up the red on the tiled floor, cloth turning pink from white. She started whistling almost subconsciously, an old Greek resistance song. The rain outside knocked against the windows of her small apartment like a metronome - like a war drum.

“I swear it stopped bleeding,” Karim yelled from her bedroom. She hoped he had taken off his shoes before getting on her bed. “Can I go see if everyone's okay now?”

She chuckled. “It's a free country, or so they tell me.” The old springs in her mattress whined as he got up. He kissed the top of her head as he passed her by. She hated how tall he was.

“I’ll be back soon,” he promised.

She watched him go. His large shoulders, his stained sweater, his curly black hair; she loved the shape of his presence. She had almost married a man, before him, back home. A boy from a good family, baptised, and who could speak to her parents in their own language. A boy who had never read Lenin.

Karim was a mistake. They had met at a party she wasn’t supposed to be at. He was cocky and reckless, and he was smarter than anyone she knew. She wasn’t used to people who could hold their own against her. She wasn’t used to muddy waters. She had always been a planner - and the plan, as far as her stay in Paris was concerned, was to write her thesis, get the goddamn piece of paper, fly back to Athens, maybe collect a smile from her parents somewhere along the way. Life here was hard as hell, but it was better than anything her beautiful broken Greece had to offer. She had given herself many rules, but in the end, they could all be boiled down to _no distractions_. That meant no boys, and certainly no politics. Karim, for all intents and purposes, was indeed a mistake. Magda didn't make those. Karim was…

… knocking on the door. One-two, one-two-three, twice.

“Hi,” Karim said. He flashed her a smile so blinding she almost missed the man leaning heavily against his shoulder.

“Hi,” she sighed.

“This is Marco,” Karim said. Marco had a split lip and a nasty bruise flourishing right under his left eye. He was wearing a green football jersey and ratty jeans.

“Come in,” Magda said.

Her father had always wanted her to become a doctor.


End file.
